


Newton's brains and a trash can

by Ciulla96



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Attempt at Humor, Christmas Presents, Christmas fic, Don't ask me why, Grumpy Hermann Gottlieb, Hermann does not believe in friendship, Hermann has something to do with it, I'm Bad At Tagging, Kaiju Brain, M/M, Newton can't find his Kaiju Brain, Newton may get him to change his mind, Pre-Canon, Pre-Movie: Pacific Rim (2013), Pre-Slash, in july
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-09
Updated: 2018-07-09
Packaged: 2019-06-07 21:40:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15228435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ciulla96/pseuds/Ciulla96
Summary: “I lost my brain, Hermann!”“The correct expression would beI lost my mind, and that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for ages!”“No, Hermann!” How could he not understand what he was talking about? He had talked about little else for days! The man truly never listened to him. “I lost my kaiju brain!”“Oh, that one”, Hermann answered, calmly removing his cane to let the other move freely again. “It was deteriorating, so I threw it away”.Newt look at him, astonished. “You mean… My brain is in the trash?”“I wish both of your brains were”.





	Newton's brains and a trash can

“Are we going to exchange gifts for Christmas?”  
Newton had been talking uninterruptedly for about half an hour without Hermann truly listening to him, but this question eventually caught the mathematician’s attention. “And why, by Jove, should we?” He replied.  
Newt raised his eyes from the kaiju samples he was examining, taking a few steps toward Hermann’s side of the room. “C’mon, dude, we’re friends, there’s no denying it! Friends exchange gifts”.  
“I hardly believe in friendship, let alone in exchanging Christmas presents”.  
_Man, you didn’t have to be so rude_. Newton shrugged and started to look for something around the lab. If Gottlieb was going to be a pain in the ass that morning, he wasn’t going to hold back on his own attitude either. “Fine, no gifts. What about a kiss under the mistletoe?”  
To Newt’s delight, Hermann failed in hiding his embarrassment. “Oh, come on, Newton. Be serious”.  
“Fine, fine. I guess I’ll be happy with a celebratory handshake”, he cut short. He was having fun trying to upset his colleague, but he was also beginning to worry about the absence of his most important sample. He started throwing kaiju entrails all around the room, ignoring Hermann’s complaints when they reached his side of the lab, and when he realized that what he was looking for was nowhere to be found, he started panicking.  
He had lost the brain!  
The brain wasn’t, actually, a real brain. Newt loved to refer to it as his brain, but in truth it was a little fragment of a kaiju brain he had found in the closed fist of one of the Jaegers. It was rather small – about fifteen inches tall – but extraordinarily well preserved. Newton had studied it for days before considering the idea of drifting with it, to try and uncover some information about how the kaiju’s world worked. Hermann had tried to talk him out of it, saying that he could die or some other rubbish like that, so for the moment his idea was put on hold, but now his precious little brain was gone.  
He kept looking for it more and more desperately, until Herman stopped him by placing the cane in front of his face. “Calm down! Why are you even so upset, you’re annoying me!”  
“I lost my brain, Hermann!”  
“The correct expression would be _I lost my mind_ , and that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for ages!”  
“No, Hermann!” How could he not understand what he was talking about? He had talked about little else for days! The man truly never listened to him. “I lost my kaiju brain!”  
“Oh, that one”, Hermann answered, calmly removing his cane to let the other move freely again. “It was deteriorating, so I threw it away”.  
Newt look at him, astonished. “You mean… My brain is in the trash?”  
“I wish both of your brains were”.  
Newton shook his head in denial, trying to ignore Gottlieb’s harsh words. “No, no. You can’t have done that. You must be joking”.  
“Did you hear what I said? It was _deteriorating._ Or are you so much of a _kaiju groupie_ that you want to keep rotting samples, too?”  
“I was deliberately letting it deteriorate. In a controlled environment. For experimental reasons. It had to deteriorate just a little bit and now you’ve ruined everything!”  
The red shade on Hermann’s face implied that he was mortified, and Newton almost felt sympathy toward him. He waited for his apologies, determined to forgive him if that meant having the chance to make him friendlier and less of a piece of crap with a stick up his butt, but the apologies never came. “How the hell was I supposed to know? You have to warn me about your experiments! Why didn’t you tell me about that?”  
“Well”, Newt replied, his rage now growing, “that’s none of your business. Now you’re coming with me”. He started pulling Hermann’s arm and headed out of the lab, the mathematician limping after him. “Where are we going?”  
“You’re going to help me get my brain out of the trash”.  
  
  
A few minutes later the two scientists were standing in front of an enormous trash can on which the word _organic_ was barely readable due to the dirt and grime covering it. Hermann scrunched his nose at the smell that was coming from it, while Newton was having a hard time trying to look inside. He had to stand on his toes, and even so he couldn’t really see anything. “Why does it have to been so tall?” He muttered.  
“Well, I guess that’s because people are supposed to throw things into it, not getting them _out_ of it”.  
Turning toward the colleague, Newton glared at him, before a suspiciously evil grin appeared on his face. “Well, looks like I’m gonna have to climb on your shoulders, dude!”  
Gottlieb backed off as quick as he could, shaking his head and pointing to his cane. “You cannot stand on my shoulders, Newton. I’m _disabled_. Knock some sense into you”.  
“You _owe_ me. It’s either that or you climb on my shoulders and take my brain out of there”.  
“Or, I could go back in the Shatterdome, look for something like a ladder and come back here!”  
“Your ladder is too high to be of any use, and the more we wait, the more my brain deteriorates. We have no time to lose!”  
“Well, there’s no way I’m going to climb on your shoulders and there’s no way I’d ever be able to let you climb on mine!”  
“Oh, why not?” Newt maliciously asked. “You just have to bend over a little and hold a tight grip on your cane, I’ll do the rest of the job”.  
Strangely enough, Hermann immediately agreed and sighed while turning to face the can, but this was probably only because he didn’t want Newt to see his face blushing at that unusual choice of words. He bended over and Newt, without giving him time to change his mind, placed his hands on his shoulders and awkwardly climbed on him. “Now, please, hurry up, so you can get off of me”, Hermann simply stated when he regained stability, relying heavily on his cane.  
Newt started looking in the trash can, grabbing onto the edge to keep his balance. “I can’t find it. Give me your cane, Hermann”.  
“Oh, you’re not using my cane to rummage through the trash, you fool! Besides, if I give it to you we’ll both fall”.  
“Well, then I’m going to Pentecost to tell him that I have to stop my research because you throw away my most important sample only to spite me!”  
“Oh, look at you, threatening me like a five-year-old child!” Was Hermann’s response, but nonetheless the mathematician tried shifting the weight on his good leg and handed the cane to Newton.  
Boy, was that a bad idea.  
Without his necessary support, Hermann fell under their combined weights. Newton instinctively grabbed harder onto the edge of the trash can, but this only made him lose his balance and fall over right in the trash can with a very effeminate scream, bringing the cane with him.  
From his new position on the ground, Hermann raised his eyes, both amused and worried. “Newton? I told you we were going to fall”.  
“Well”, Newton muttered from inside the bin, “you must be happy now. Both of my brains are in the trash can”.  
“I didn’t mean this to happen”, was his sincere answer. “Can you come out?”  
“It’s not enough filled with rubbish to let me climb out, dude. I might try, I guess. What for, anyway? I’ve found my brain, and it’s totally gone”.  
“I’m going to find a ladder, or a stool, or anything that could be of use to get you out”, Hermann answered without saying anything about the other scientist’s sadness. “Stay there. Well, not that you can actually go anywhere”, he added. And with that, he limped away.  
   
  
A few minutes later, Stacker Pentecost witnessed an unusual scene. Hermann Gottlieb was running – or, at least, trying to – without his cane, asking anyone he could see for a ladder.  
“Marshal!” The scientist shouted when he saw him. “Marshal! Where can I find a ladder?”  
“And you need that because?” Asked Pentecost.  
“Well – Long story short, I threw Newton’s kaiju brain in the trash can – by accident, of course – and then…”  
“If that’s the problem, you should know that the brain is probably irretrievable, by now. The garbage men were supposed to come and empty the trash bins five minutes ago”.  
“That’s not the problem, the fact is that we were trying to…” Hermann suddenly stopped, trying to work his head around what he had just heard. “Five minutes ago?”  
Without even waiting for a reply, he started running again and in a few moments he was nowhere to be seen.  
  
  
During the walk toward the trash bins, Hermann feared that he would have never seen Newt again – or worse, he feared that he should have gone through the trouble of driving to the dump to get him back – but when he arrived, his colleague was waiting for him with his cane in his hands. “The rubbish men helped me out. Nice guys, really”.  
With a sigh of relief, Hermann fell heavily onto the ground, sitting with his back against the now empty trash can. Now that he wasn’t scared about Newt’s fate – well, not that he ever was – he suddenly realized how tired he was from all the running he had being doing. With an amused laugh, Newton sat next to him and tried to clean his dirty hands in his even dirtier trousers. “It’s been quite an adventure, hasn’t it?”  
“Well, not one that I’m willing to repeat anytime soon, but… Sure”.  
Newton smiled, his past irritation already forgotten. Hermann smiled back to his colleague and finally said those words Newton had been waiting to hear. “Listen, Newton, I’m sorry about your brain. But”, he immediately added, “I still don’t get it. Why were you making it deteriorate? Even though I didn’t want you to, I thought you were going to try regardless and drift with it”.  
“Well, you see…” Newton sighed, looking for the right words. “I _was_ going to drift with it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about you and that _you-may-die_ thing you keep saying, so I thought I could have it deteriorate just a tiny little bit so I could maybe reduce the neural load on my brain and eventually drift with it without serious damage”.  
“That’s…” Hermann paused, astonished. “Well, extraordinarily cautious and almost… Reasonable of you”.  
“Yeah, dude, I knew you would have found it sexy”.  
“Wha-“ Hermann choked on his on spit and started coughing. “What? Cautious and reasonable is not my definition of sexy, Newton. It’s my definition of bearable to work with, which, in case you’re wondering, you usually aren’t”.  
“You can keep saying that, but I know you like the way my brain works!” Newt replied with a light shrug and a huge smile.  
“Your actual brain, no”, was the harsh answer. “Your kaiju brain, well, who cares, it happens to be biological waste right now”.  
“Look at you, twisting the knife into my wound instead of feeling sorry for me!” Newt tried to pretend he was hurt, but he was having a hard time doing that. He’d never had such a light conversation with Hermann and he was enjoying his extraordinary closeness – the man rarely let anyone in his personal space, which meant none could stay less than ten feet away from him without being reminded of how uncomfortable that was making him feel. And still, there they were, sitting on the ground shoulder to shoulder, one panting from running too much, the other smelly from having been tossed in a trash can. It wasn’t the best way to become friends, but if that was how it was going to happen Newt wouldn’t have had any complaint.  
“I didn’t mean to _twist the knife,_ as you call it”, Hermann said while rubbing his pained leg, “but still, I’m really sorry about throwing your brain away”.  
“Yeah, whatever, you know what, dude, I forgive you”, Newt sighed patting the other’s shoulder. Hermann slightly froze but didn’t move. That was a good sign. “I should have told you about my experiment all along”, he added. “I didn’t because I thought you would have prevented me from drifting with it anyway”.  
“That’s because I would have prevented you from drifting with it. It still could have killed you”.  
Newt looked at him in shock. “But – You just said that I was being extraordinarily cautious and reasonable!”  
“Well, you must admit it, by your standards that doesn’t mean much”.  
“I can’t fault you on that one”. Newton stood up, wanting to pat Hermann’s shoulder again but not willing to push his luck. Instead, he handed him the dirty cane, which Hermann took with a disgusted grimace. “I’m going to take a shower, dude. See you later”.  
When Newt was halfway to the Shatterdome, Hermann stood up too. “I’ll find you a new brain!” He shouted at Newt’s back. When Newton gave no sign of hearing that, Hermann fondly smiled and lowered his voice. “And by Jove, I hope you never change yours”.  
  
  
On Christmas day, Newton walked into the lab they shared with a small package in his hands.  
“Hey dude, I know you said we shouldn’t exchange Christmas presents, but when I saw this it reminded me of you and…” He stopped, astonished, when he noticed an enormous present wrapped in red and green paper on his desk. He handed his now seemingly miserable package to the colleague, who took it with a tiny smile, and then he headed toward the table with an incredulous look on his face. A small card on the package said _From: Dr. Hermann Gottlieb_ , and Newt couldn’t help but smile at the formality.  
“Wow, dude, that’s – Big!” He exclaimed when he managed to talk again. “And I thought you _didn’t believe in friendship, let alone in exchanging Christmas presents_ ”, he immediately quoted, mocking the other’s accent. Hermann shrugged, trying to hide his embarrassment. “It’ not a proper gift, it’s more of an apology”.  
“An enormous apology, I might add”, Newton pointed out.  
“Let’s just say it’s a _fragment_ of an apology”.  
“A fragment of a…” The biologist suddenly lighted up, starting to tear the wrapping paper without any delicacy. “No way! It can’t be!”  
“It is indeed. A perfectly conserved fragment of a kaiju brain. And before you ask, you can play with it as much as you want, but there’s no way I’m letting you drift with it”.  
Newton was too busy admiring it to truly listen to Hermann. “Where the hell did you find such a big one?”  
Hermann’s mind was crossed with a few horrible images – his money vanishing from his wallet, first of all, then a kaiju-specialized thief explaining that he didn’t have a brain but could have retrieved one after the next kaiju attack, which Hermann had predicted to be a few days before Christmas – he felt some kind of sympathy for Newton when he thought that this kaiju attack was more a matter of luck than a disgrace. Then he remembered the thief leading him into the kaiju corpse after neutralizing his body fluids -- and there was no way he could ever tell Newton about this or the biologist would have got himself into troubles only to take a trip into some kaiju corpse and get samples on his own -- and it had been so disgusting, why the hell did he even bother doing that, anyway? Newton had already forgiven him, he could have just bought him a kaiju action figure and that awkward groupie would have been equally overjoyed.  
Instead of trying to organize his confused thoughts into a sentence, Hermann simply shrugged. “I’m trying to forget”.  
Newton didn’t ask anything else, he just turned toward Hermann with a guilty look. “Listen, dude, don’t open my gift, it seems kind of lame now. I’ll get you something else…” But Hermann immediately stopped him. “As long as it isn’t a kaiju action figure I’ll be happy with it”.  
(Obviously, it was a kaiju action figure. The day after Newton showed up with a brand-new fashion cane for Hermann, saying that he was sorry about his unwelcomed gift and about using Hermann’s other cane to rummage through the garbage, and he allowed his colleague to throw away his other present now that he had come up with a more appropriate one. Hermann agreed, but he never actually threw the action figure away. He still keeps it on his nightstand and looks at it before going to bed, shaking his head but smiling fondly at the thought of the giver).


End file.
